Prep Player of the Week: Prince Avenue Christian's Conner Sibley

Monday

Jan 27, 2014 at 8:01 PM

Chris Starrs

Prince Avenue Christian boys basketball coach Richard Ricketts looks at this season as the parts of its sum.

There was the portion before Christmas, when the young Wolverines - who have five sophomores and two freshmen on their roster -- went 2-4 and were learning the painful art of playing together. Then there's been the season's 2014 segment, in which Prince Avenue has gone 7-3, with everyone on the same page.

"It's been like two seasons," Ricketts, who has coached basketball at the school for nearly two decades, said. "Up until Christmas and the first week after Christmas, we were still just getting started because football went so long. But in the last two or three weeks, it's starting to click and the kids are starting to play with a lot of confidence."

One of the chief reasons for the Wolverines' January ascent is the emergence of guard Conner Sibley, the team's only senior. The 5-foot-11, 180-pound Sibley started the season behind two eight balls as he went straight from the football field to the court and did so with a left ankle injured in Prince Avenue's final football game, a 33-14 loss to Calvary Day in second round of the Class A private school state playoffs.

"Conner had a bad high ankle sprain," Ricketts, whose team is 9-7 overall and 4-6 in Region 8-A, said. "He had not practiced one day by our third game, which is when we got everybody back from football. He played some against Athens Academy without even one day of practice. We couldn't do much, but it was valuable for us having him out there. He was probably 60 percent that game, but it's his senior year and he wanted to gut it out so we let him try."

Sibley, an all-region defensive end/outside linebacker who also played fullback and was the placekicker on coach Jeff Herron's Prince Avenue squad, has averaged 15 points and 6.5 rebounds per game this winter.

In victories last week against Towns County (62-34), Lincoln County (48-44) and Glascock County (67-34), Sibley scored 12, 15 and 17 points, respectively, and has been the catalyst for the Wolverines' recent run of four consecutive wins and five victories in their last six games.

"It's been awesome lately, because we have the mindset that we're a basketball team that's capable of playing with anybody, as opposed to past years," Sibley said. "We want to get Prince Avenue basketball back to where it's been in the past. Lately we've been blessed by the Lord to pull out some wins and it's been helpful to pick up these recent wins. It's awesome seeing this team grow, bond with each other in tough moments and get some wins."

Ricketts, who pointed out that it's been 11 years since Prince Avenue had a winning record in January, added that Sibley's leadership has been critical to the program's recent triumphs and he hopes it will provide the building blocks to the Wolverines' future development.

"The way he's playing is giving other kids energy and confidence," Ricketts said. "At the beginning of the year, we talked about the fact that it's been a while since our boys program has been competitive. It's going to be a process, honestly, and Conner has bought in to the idea that before you can get to the top, you've got to get to where you can compete from game to game. His play has made us competitive and we're starting to have a little success. That helps the kids as much as anything."

But Sibley is leaving it all on the court every night, rebuilding season or not.

"A lot of times, people see a rebuilding year and treat it too much like a rebuilding year and that things don't matter because we're trying to get better," he said. "My thought is, let's do what we've got to do now to be good now. We're not sitting back and saying, 'We're just growing.' We want to work our butts off in every single game and be the best we can be with what we've got. Hopefully in the coming years, the guys on the team now will step up and they'll make sure we have an even better year next year."

"Athens Christian is on another planet from everybody else in the region and I think Providence is the second- or third-best team," Ricketts said. "And Athens Academy has been playing well, so it's going to be a fun week. I told the kids we're going to work hard and keep doing what we're doing. We'll try to get better every time we go out, and what happens, happens. We're just going to see."

"This week will definitely will be a gut check for us," Sibley added. "We've had some games where we had to rise up. This week we'll be in fights for the entire game. We'll need to play together as a team. I'm looking forward to it. I love a challenge and we've got some momentum coming off the last couple of weeks and we know we're able to rise up in tough times. We know it's going to be tough, but Coach (Mark) Farriba said that rough seas make great sailors. It will be a test for us."

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